Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing...

Are you a young athlete looking to compete with the best? How about a seasoned professional wanting to stay at the top of their game? One of the toughest aspects of being an athlete is consistency; not just performing well at one event, but being the best every time you enter a competition. No matter how hard you train or tweak your diet, you might feel like you’ve hit a plateau. You might not be making any more progress at all. You aren’t alone!

NEW YORK TIMES bestseller Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year National Sports Media Association Sports Book of the Year An NPR "Book of the Day" #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most...

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.   

South Africa revels in its reputation as a sport-loving country. Yet just beneath the surface lurks a dark underbelly that reeks of cheating and illicit shenanigans, where shady characters and willing athletes are prepared to do whatever it takes to come out on top. South African sport is awash with steroids, a habit that formed in the late 1980s and continues unabated today, with participants and champions alike opting to play dirty.

The NBA has returned to prominence on the backs of phenoms like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. The media promotes them, the shoe companies pay them, and America applauds. But how exactly do such players reach the pros? What do they give up to get there? And what happens to those who fall short?

The Premier League is the most commercially successful football league in history, the self-proclaimed 'best league in the world'. But success has come at a cost, unbalancing the English game to a profound and damaging degree. In this revealing and eye-opening analysis, leading economist Mark Gregory reveals the breadth and depth of the problems facing our national men's game, and shows us a way to bring football home for good.

If you want relations that bring joy, fulfilment, and peace into your life. Then you’re looking at the right book. Most people have a hard time nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships. You’re exposed to new people daily at work, at the gym, or even at the supermarket. Despite this, less than one in ten interactions end up flourishing into a friendship.

Hockey culture: it’s a commonly used phrase inside the game, glorifying sacrifice, toughness, loyalty, and a sense of identity. Justin Davis viewed this culture as something he was lucky enough to experience. After all, he’d won a Memorial Cup after leading the tournament in scoring, and he’d been drafted by the Washington Capitals. “In my mind,” he says, “I was the normal one.” Unfortunately, after stepping outside the game, he began to recognize the racism, sexual abuse and bullying that was so deeply ingrained in the sport.

From the sports documentarian and executive producer of the docuseries The Religion of Sports, a memoir-meets-manifesto about the overwhelming power of sports and how they provide meaning and purpose in people’s lives all over the world. Featuring never-before-heard stories about Tom Brady...

"A really brilliant book" — Malcolm Gladwell "So important" — Glennon Doyle Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards 2022 A close look at how big money and high stakes have transformed youth sports, turning once healthy, fun activities for kids into all-consuming...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Rap Year Book and Basketball (and Other Things), a clever and inventive examination of some of basketball's most iconic players, moments, games, and more. Everything in basketball is measured. Everything in basketball is counted, and...

A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: Basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story - and gets in the game.

Every year, more than 3.5 million children under age 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse. Journalist Mark Hyman investigates the evolution of youth sports from mere games to full-on quests to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes by pushing them beyond physical and emotional limits. Opening up a crucial discussion about the perils of youth-sports culture today, Hyman offers the solutions and answers we need.

Football teams create playbooks, in which they draw up the plays they will use on the field. Playbooks are how teams work and why they win. This book is about a different kind of playbook: The one coaches, teams, universities, police, communities, the media, and fans seem to follow whenever a college football player is accused of sexual assault. It’s a deep dive into how different institutions - the NCAA, athletic departments, universities, the media - run the same plays over and over again when these stories break.

Whether you’re riding into the alleyway at a sold-out rodeo, stepping onto a stage, or facing competition in your own arena of life, anxiety has a way of stealing focus and shaking confidence. In Unrattled: conquering competition anxiety, professional barrel racer and mindset coach Marci Powell shares her real, behind-the-scenes stories of battling nerves under the lights—and how she learned to ride through them with courage and grit.

Before he'd covered dozens of World Series; before he'd written about countless hirings, firings, superstars, and scandals, Bill Madden was a cub reporter on one of his first assignments at Yankee Stadium—and manager Ralph Houk had just gone out of his way to spit tobacco juice all over Madden's shoes. “That’s Ralph’s way with rookie writers he doesn’t recognize,” came the explanation. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Following in the footsteps of Robeson, Ali, Robinson and others, today’s Black athletes re-engage with social issues and the meaning of American patriotism Named a best book of 2018 by Library Journal It used to be that politics and sports were as separate from one another as church and state...

The Sports Parents Solution gives you the strategies and methods you need to transform the parent culture in your team, allowing you to better support each athlete’s growth, improve your team’s performance, create an extraordinary experience for all involved—and take your program to a whole new level.

From the #1 NYT bestselling author often called the greatest living sportswriter, a countdown of the 50 greatest and most magical seasons in baseball history. Joe Posnanski is the go-to writer in sports, and Fifty Seasons delivers a joyful, stirring look at baseball moments and miracles that...